“His name is Juan Gomez. According to this, he’s only twenty-three.”
Hanni bent down, peeled back the dead man’s lips. I saw two broken rows of decayed stubs where his teeth had once been.
“A tweaker,” Hanni said. “He was probably the cook. Lindsay, this case belongs to Narcotics, maybe the DEA.”
Hanni punched buttons on his cell phone as I stared down at Juan Gomez’s body. First visible sign of methamphetamine use is rotten teeth. It takes a couple of years of food- and sleep-deprivation to age a meth head twenty years. By then, the drug would have eaten away big hunks of his brain.
Gomez was on his way out before the explosion.
“So the bus was a mobile meth lab?” said Conklin.
Hanni was on hold for Narcotics.
“Yep,” he said. “Until it blew all to hell.”
Part One. BAGMAN JESUS
Chapter 1
CINDY THOMAS BUTTONED her lightweight Burberry trench coat, said, “Morning, Pinky,” as the doorman held open the front doors of the Blakely Arms. He touched his hat brim and searched Cindy’s eyes, saying, “Have a good day, Ms. Thomas. You take care.”
Cindy couldn’t say that she never looked for trouble. She worked the crime desk at the Chronicle and liked to say, “Bad news is good news to me.”
But a year and a half ago a psycho with an illegal sublet and an anger-management problem, living two floors above her, had sneaked into apartments and gone on a brutal killing spree.
The killer had been caught and convicted, and was currently quarantined on death row at the “Q.”
But still, there were aftershocks at the Blakely Arms. The residents triple-locked their doors every night, flinched at sudden noises, felt the loss of common, everyday security.